


she bets on long shots

by tosca1390



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 19:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2080827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Aden does not come here as an Arrow. He comes here as – </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Well. The labels are not entirely static, but it is not for business that he frequents this cabin. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>A cabin that is suspiciously empty, when it should be full. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	she bets on long shots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> FOR JORDAN, MY PRINCIPESSA.

*

The cabin is dark, no lights warming the cool glass windows or seeping through the seams of the doorways and wood slats. 

Aden stands in the shady copse, the sun just beginning its descent high above him, orange-gold light shimmering through the thick clusters of trees. This part of the forest is very still, very quiet; predators know not to invade its edges, for fear of the changelings. Normally he too would avoid coming so close to private living spaces, especially changeling ones; the Arrows have something of a business relationship with both DarkRiver and SnowDancer, with limited free passage negotiated, mostly around the shared space of the empath training areas. 

However, Aden does not come here as an Arrow. He comes here as – 

Well. The labels are not entirely static, but it is not for business that he frequents this cabin. 

A cabin that is suspiciously empty, when it should be full. 

The air, crisp with the onset of autumn, curls under his leather jacket. A gift from one he would visit; she appreciates it on his form. Or at least she said so, in rather lascivious terms last week. He rubs his hands along the front of his jeans, peering at the seemingly empty cabin. On the mental plane, he checks his calendar, his dates and times and appointment – no, he is here as they scheduled a few days ago, with an evening and a day off on her part stretched out before them. It is odd that she would not be here, and not tell him of it. 

He will wait, he supposes, and begins to walk towards the front porch, leaves and twigs crunching under his heavy-heeled boots. 

Just then, the front door springs open and a dark-haired, tall man bounds out onto the porch, a medium-sized canvas tote bag in an alarming shade of blue that Aden recognizes from her room in his hands. It is full of clothing, women’s clothing. 

“Kit,” Aden says, voice even. 

Kit blinks, shutting the front door behind him and turning the lock. “Shit. Aden. Dude – she’s – “

“Did she forget?” Aden asks calmly. He does not think he would take it well if she did. 

Kit rolls his eyes, his face unusually expressive and readable. A future alpha of his own pack, it is assumed, Kit has taken on the mantle of adulthood early, especially considering the deaths of his parents when he was quite young. He has learned to master his expressions to a degree – useful for a future leader. Today, though, he looks quite young and skittish. Logically, Aden assumes something has happened to make him so. 

“Where is she?” Aden asks. Part of him – the part newly freed by Silence’s fall and the continued partnership with the empaths – goes utterly cold. 

Kit steps nimbly from the porch and comes to Aden, dark hair glinting in the nascent sunset. He claps a hand on Aden’s shoulder, a familiar touch Aden allows to almost no one. But Kit is a friend. Aden does not have many friends; he is a leader, something of an alpha to his Arrows, but he does not have… friends. 

“At Tammy’s. Come on. I’ll take you.”

“I am not cleared for free passage in your healer’s home,” Aden says, his muscles thrumming with tension. 

Kit shrugs. “I’ll take the fall if someone gets pissed off. C’mon. We’ll run.”

Falling into step with the younger man, Aden swallows down the worrisome lump in his throat, and pushes his Tk into keeping up with the changeling leopard. They run through the thick forests, grass and twigs and dying plants a carpet beneath their feet. Aden can hear his heart beating in his ears. 

He does not think he can blame it on the physical exertion. 

*

“What happened?” Aden asks once they slow down, on the edges of the healer’s home territory. He can feel eyes on his back, sense the presence of other changeling minds. 

Kit growls, low in his throat; something of a warning, Aden thinks. Aden takes the tote bag from Kit and heaves it over his shoulder as they walk briskly through the trees to the clearing. 

“She was on patrol along the southern border – covering for a novice who broke their collarbone last week. Some of those Silent Voices nutjobs were around trying to stake out the empath training area, we think, and they had tranquilizers and guns,” Kit says darkly, glancing at Aden. “They weren’t close to the empaths at all – but they’re learning how to find them.”

“I’ll alert Vasic. Do Hunter and Snow already know?” 

Kit nods shortly, the gleam in his eyes shifting to his inner cat. Blue-purple night creeps along the eastern edge of the sky, chasing the orange sunset through the trees. “Yeah, word is out. Krychek going to do something about them?”

“Every incident they create harms them more than helps them, especially considering the success of the Honeycomb Protocol,” Aden says evenly. “However, steps need to be taken.”

“Yeah,” Kit says, something akin to bloodlust edging his tone. “That’s my sister they got this time.”

Aden cannot help but agree. “Is she – “

“Shot in the shoulder. Tammy sent me to get her some clean clothes. If it was bad, I doubt she would have gone to the trouble,” Kit says as they enter the clearing. 

Immediately, the front door opens and Nathan Ryder steps out, a fierce broad-shouldered man defending the gates. 

“Kit, you know – “

“Yeah, and so do you,” Kit says with a scowl, jabbing a hand in Aden’s direction. 

“I am unarmed. If you would like to search me, I understand,” Aden says evenly. 

Nate glances over Aden, and rolls his eyes. “She’s with Tammy in the kitchen. Blood all over my fucking dinner,” he says good-naturedly, though his gaze doesn’t leave Aden once. 

A protective man. Aden understands the instinct. Normally, it has been merely for his fellow Arrows, more recently the empaths; now, it asserts itself for a singular woman. 

“The level of scrutiny seems relatively lax,” Aden murmurs to Kit. 

Kit hesitates for just a moment, glancing at Aden as they walk through the front door and into the hallway. There is something oddly secretive in his gaze. “Well – maybe we’re just used to you,” he says at last, shrugging. 

The house is warmly lit, yellow and gold and settled-in. Families must live like this, Aden thinks. Rina and Kit’s cabin is like this, if less uniformly decorated. His room at the Arrow compound is lacking all such personal accoutrements; the green space is their only sanctuary. He would not have known the difference, until Rina. 

There are no other minds in the house, just them; Aden follows Kit to the kitchen, where he can hear Rina’s voice, taut and like gravel, over the soothing, cooler tones of Tammy, the DarkRiver healer. 

“Just put a bandage on it, Tammy, I’m fine – “

“Shut up and let me stitch you,” Tammy orders, smiling as he and Kit walk in. “Oh, good. Hello, Aden.”

He has met the healer just once, during a recent border meeting between the two changeling alphas, Krychek, and himself. That she remembers him so well takes him aback for a moment. Then, his gaze fixes on the glaring yellow-haired woman with blood over her torso and arms. 

“I’m sorry,” Rina says to him, rolling her bright eyes. She looks unnaturally pale, her skin shining damp with sweat. “I thought I’d be done by now – “

“Do you know how much blood you lost?” Tammy asks conversationally, a hard ice to her words. “A lot. I wasn’t just going to staple you shut and send you on your way.”

Rina closes her mouth and shuts her eyes. There is blood on her brow and under her nails. Her blouse is mangled as it lays discarded on her lap. She sits on the kitchen table in just her bra and jeans, her hair matted with sweat and blood as it escapes from its high mass of upswept waves. To Aden, she looks… fragile. It is not something he associates with Rina. In the two months they have been spending time together in a social and interpersonal manner, she has never seemed so delicate. He has always known she can take care of herself. Now, all he wants is to care for her instead. 

“Aden, would you come sit by her?” Tammy asks, and then turns to Kit to send him upstairs for more supplies. 

Immediately, Aden sets the tote bag down and strides across the kitchen. He sits on the edge of the kitchen table, his thigh pressed to Rina’s, his arm going around her exposed waist. The need to touch her, to assure himself of her continued existence, is a strange impulse, but one he does not ignore. Ivy would be proud of his progress, he thinks. 

But, as Rina lays her cheek on his shoulder and pushes into him, the tight muscles of her back relaxing under his touch, he knows this is not just for his own mental benefit. This emotional connection goes much deeper, touches the dark secret parts of him that lay dormant underneath the rigors of Silence and the demands of Arrow training. 

“I’m cold,” she murmurs, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. “You’re wearing your jacket.”

He rubs a gentle hand over her ribs, listening to the shift and change and hum of her breathing. “I am.”

She huffs out a laugh, the sound strained in the warm kitchen as Tammy lays out gauze, self-dissolving stitches, antiseptic. Kit comes back in, arms laden with boxes, and Tammy turns to him with a sigh, her warm face strained at the mouth and eyes. 

“I had thought healers worked in an internal fashion,” Aden murmurs, his mouth near her cool brow. 

“I do,” Tammy says briskly, appearing in front of them once more with a pressure injector full of painkillers. “But it takes a lot of energy to knit skin and muscle back together, and the stitches will keep it neat. It looks worse than it is.”

“Feels fine,” Rina mumbles. Aden anchors her to him as Tammy presses the painkiller into her upper arm. With a hiss and a sigh, Rina rubs her cheek against his jacket again. “No painkillers,” she murmurs. 

“Damn dominant soldiers,” Tammy mutters, and takes up her sutures. 

“Deadening pain is more helpful in the long run,” Aden comments, and Tammy snorts. 

“Tell that to these morons,” she says shortly. “The only reason she didn’t put up more of a fight is because of the quarts of blood she lost.”

“How did she get here in enough time?” Kit asks, standing behind Tammy, his brow drawn with concern. 

“Dorian was with her. He drove her here, made a tourniquet out of her shirt,” Tammy says, gaze laser-focused on the sutures dotting the curve of Rina’s shoulder. “Still, a wound like this is always tons of blood.”

“I know,” he says, untold amounts of injuries filtering through his mind. The children in the Arrow schools were always shocked to see that much blood. 

“Pretends to be a field medic,” Rina murmurs, her head tucked under his chin. 

“Pretends, huh?” Tammy says, a smile in her voice, but she doesn’t press. Rina knows the truth of his particular abilities, but had clearly not betrayed his trust. He knew she would not, but it heartens him all the same. 

Aden says nothing. He merely holds onto Rina, feels the steady shallow rise and fall of her breath on his neck, her cool long hand on his thigh. She is still and quiet underneath the influence of painkillers and blood loss; he doesn’t like it. He likes the fire, the bite of her wit and voice, the rise and fall of her tone as she flits between frustration and desire. Even when she falls asleep next to him, in the quiet of her bedroom surrounded by the forest, she is always thrumming with energy. This is a Rina he has never seen before. 

He doesn’t want to see it again, not like this. 

*

“I’m fine,” Rina says for the twelfth time as Kit drives her and Aden back to the Monahan’s cabin. 

Aden sits in the backseat with her, an arm still wrapped around her waist. Tammy, in closing, said to watch for any signs of fever or infection, and to keep someone with her for a day or two. Rest and food, that’s what Rina needs. 

That is clearly not on Rina’s agenda. 

“You could have let me drive,” she says grumpily, butting her chin against Aden’s shoulder. 

“Tammy said – “

“I _know_ ,” she snarls at Kit, glaring at him. Her face, still pale, is animated and sharp in the twilight. “I’m not a child. In fact, I am your elder. So – “

“Shut up,” Kit barks, the soldier in his tone. “Jesus, Rina! You were shot, okay? Maybe just take a fucking chill pill!”

Stunned into silence, Rina curls back into Aden’s embrace. Having spent time with these two siblings in recent weeks, Aden is unmoved by the exchange. Apparently, this is typical. Judd would agree, though his own experience was not like that; he mentions his niece and nephew, Marlee and Toby, whenever Aden inquires of the experience. 

“We were supposed to not leave my room,” Rina whispers to him as they drive up to the cabin. 

Kit hurries inside, leaving Aden to lift Rina from the car into his arms and carry her inside. “Is that so?” he asks, voice cool. He maneuvers carefully, ensuring no undue pressure is on her wounded shoulder as he carries her from the car and up the stairs. He can hear Kit inside, see the yellow lights begin to glow through the windows as he follows through the open front door and kicks it shut behind him. She is warm and pliable in his arms, smelling of blood and singed skin, antiseptic and pine needles. 

“It was going to be great,” she mutters, temper returning. He carries her up the stairs and into the bathroom off of her bedroom, sitting her down on the closed toilet seat before he leans over to run the ecoshower. “We were just going to fuck all day long.”

Aden blinks at her as she watches him. Heat gathers at the skin of his neck above his jacket collar. “Oh.”

“Well – okay. It sounds bad when I say it like that,” she mutters, plucking at the loose tank top Kit wrangled her into at Tammy’s. “I mean – Jesus, Aden, I just – I wanted to spend time with you. Naked. Or not naked. Clothes are fine. I like you in that jacket.”

“You are still feeling the effects of your injury,” he says, stripping himself efficiently to his nude body before he turns to her. He does not try to hide his half-hard cock from her as he helps her to a stand and strips her gently, acutely aware of the red and tender wound at her left shoulder. “You are loose-lipped.”

She laughs then, as he tugs her hair free of its elastic. Loose yellow waves fall along her back. “Are you really bathing me?” she asks. 

“Yes,” he says, picking up a plastic bag from the ground, where he left it after sending Kit for it earlier, and wrapping it loosely about the sutured skin. “You cannot bathe alone.”

“This is not how I expected our first shared shower to go,” she says, a hand curling lightly around his erection. 

He grits his teeth and gently bats her hand away. “This is our reality, however.”

“Seeing you naked is good enough for me,” she says, blinking wide bright eyes at him. 

Showering with her is a long process, though enjoyable. He washes her hair for her, the mass of it an odd weight in his hands, and rinses the sweat and dirt and blood from her skin, kneeling to reach her legs. She remains boneless and quiet for most of it, commenting rudely on the state of his ass and his chest, but he takes them as the compliments she intends them to be. He dries her carefully and carries her wrapped in a towel into her bedroom. Sounds from downstairs indicate Kit’s settlement in the living room, the entertainment comm a low hum in the hallway. But her room is quiet, the windows open to the cool night air, the smell of dying leaves and woodsmoke heavy in the air. 

“I was scared,” she says, once he has dressed her in a large t-shirt and settled them into bed. She lays on her back and he stretches out next to her on his side, watching her cautiously for signs of medical distress. But her color is good in the faint yellow lamplight, even if she still is pale. 

“Were you?” he asks after a moment. 

She touches his shoulder, the line of his collarbone, watching him with wide eyes. Her skin is creamier than his, peach-gold to his yellow-gold, but her touch sends shudders up his spine. “There was a lot of blood, but I’m used to that. There was pain, but I’m used to that to. This is the first time in a long time that I was scared, though.”

“Why?” he asks, brushing damp waves from her face. 

She bites the full swell of her bottom lip, looking at him dead on. She is very rarely shy with him. “I didn’t want to leave you,” she says. 

He blinks, cupping her cheek in his warm palm. “Oh?”

“It didn’t feel right,” she says flatly. “And I – I didn’t want to never see you again. Is that dumb? I’m sure you think it’s dumb.”

He leans over and kisses her, keeping his eyes open. Her mouth is soft, surprised, warm under his. Physical affection – affection in general – he remains a novice at, but he likes to touch her. He likes to kiss her, to feel the effects of his skin on hers. She is a dutiful and amusing instructor, and he would not mind ending his days in bed with her. 

“I was worried, as well,” he says quietly. “I always worry for you.”

“I don’t go off and get shot on purpose,” she mutters, her hand rising to ruffle through the sleek dark fall of his hair against his scalp, his neck. 

“You are an extremely talented and capable soldier, Rina,” he says evenly. “That does not mean I do not worry for you.”

Blinking, she smiles a little, her teeth sharp and white. He thinks he can sense her cat watching him now, lurking in those bright all-seeing eyes. 

“Okay,” she says. “Just don’t be an asshole about it.”

“I’ll try,” he says, startled. 

Laughing, she winces with the movement. He shifts closer to her, letting her adjust him onto his back as she curls up to his side. Owls hoot in the close branches, the autumn night alive and cool just outside the window. 

“How long can you stay?” she asks as he reaches out to shut off the lamp. 

“As long as you need,” he replies as darkness settles around them. 

He feels her sink into sleep, her muscles boneless as the strain of the day and her injury settle into her body. For a few moments, he listens to her breathe, listens to the sound of the house he thinks of as home – because she is there – before he sinks into the light sleep of a soldier, ready to battle for the fierce woman next to him if she should deem it so. 

Weeks later, Kit will tell Aden that it was this night that they first scented the mating dance. Rina will yelp and throw bacon at her brother for keeping it a secret for so long. Aden will sit at the kitchen table with his full plate of eggs and a glass of nutrient water, watching Rina, flushed and alive, and think on a smile. 

*


End file.
